When KDE 4.0 was first released, it was met with quite some criticism. Even though people saw the huge potential, the lack of functionality and stability, as well as quite a few bugs detracted from the experience. The KDE developers continued to work on implementing their relatively radical vision, and with the release of KDE 4.2 creeping ever closer, it seems they're well on their way.

Double standard? Neither Oxygen or KickOff are really usable. That's what I have been saying. It's such a shame GNOME didn't already eat KDE's lunch... because it has been definitely in position to do it for the past 3 years.

I have to agree here. I personally change the KickOff menu to Lancelot, then I install Klearlooks theme for KDE4 and select that, and also set GTK+ applications to use the Clearlooks theme at the same time.

Such a pity that the better options available for KDE are not shipped by default in most distributions.

Perhaps Mandriva's "Ia Ora" default window manager theme is the best default theme for KDE4 that I have seen amongst the distributions.